The Last Red Light In Amsterdam

“The first time I came here, a black man leapt out of the shadows and screamed at me -‘What to you want? Boy? Girl? Heroin?’ ”

Gunnar nods towards the corner of memory as if his arrival were yesterday.

“I was absolutely terrified! I thought he was asking if I was a boy or girl! I hardly knew myself back then!” “Listen kid,” he snarled at me. “If you don’t want boy or girl or drugs then what the hell are you doing here for Gods sakes? F**k off!”

“I did, of course, I ran like hell! But I swore that one day I would live here! I had never seen anything so outrageous!” We are sitting in a house in the ‘notorious’ red light district of Amsterdam, an area once teeming with crime and punishment, freaks and misfits and a global magnet for the Age of Aquarius children.

There is a distinctly suburban feel to Geldersekade these days. It’s like visiting an old aunt who has returned from her adventures abroad and settled down to a life of decency and nostalgia.

Gunnar the singer continues ruminating as we sip green tea in the weak spring sunshine, nearby church bells chime the hour. “In those days I would open my curtain in the morning and scream at the junkies sleeping in my garden, and gossip with the hookers and now it’s all just changed! The police used to call this house Sodom and Gomorrah for god’s sakes!”

He pours more tea as he shakes his head. The garden is busy blooming with the promise of spring, not even a footprint marks the well-worked soil, and a lonely red light across the canal marks the last prostitute standing on Geldersekade.

The neighbours’ pop their heads in the picture window, stop for coffee or a drink, babies are held up for kisses and cakes. Pete the Aussie has been called to Immigration to discuss his status. He and Scarlet are nervous wrecks over it and have many drinks to calm their nerves before the due interview date. Upstairs, a reformed junkie paints and coos over his new baby, Sam.

One lazy Sunday, there is an art gallery welcome to the world for Sam, and a display of his fathers latest art work. There are balloons and babies and paintings in exactly the correct mix.

The apartment in Geldersekade is my window on Amsterdam; leaving aside the queues at the museums and crowded coffee shops, I brew coffee and sit by the wide screen window. Boats chug along the canals, women cycle past in impossibly high heels and a sleeping drunk in the square attracts three flavours of police. A British groom-to-be is led past in chains by his rowdy mates.

Another Sunday and another gathering of the post avant- garde crowd. This time a funeral at the Cotton Club. My friend sings Lover Man, accompanied by a saxophone. Customers and mourners mingle and chat. I wander back to the window on the street. The sail maker waves from his bike as he cycles by.

Tourists leak in a steady stream from Amsterdam Central Train Station; they ebb and flow like the tidal wall beyond the city of canals. “Is this a coffee shop?’ A tourist has his head in through the window; his mates from a shabby semi circle around him. He is their Hostage Groom, their sacrificial lamb.

For one crazy second I fight the urge to scream at them like the black guy did to the singer at the beginning of this tale

“What do you want? Tea? Cookies? Scones? If you don’t want that then what the hell are you doing here for Gods sakes! F*k off!”

But the second passes and I don’t, I silently point towards the coffee shop on the corner. And so the legend lives on through another hangover.